MIGRATION

Introduction to the period
1 Migration in the Middle Ages c1000–c1500
FACTFILE
Key dates
c1000–c1500.
1066
Norman Conquest.
1070
First written record of
Jews in England.
1189–90
Massacres of Jews in
London and York.
1265
Italian bankers allowed
to charge interest.
1270
Henry III ordered
expulsion of all nonweavers.
1290
Expulsion of the Jews.
1440–87
‘Alien subsidies’ –
taxation of foreigners.
Introduction to the period
During the Middle Ages, most people in England lived in villages. Under the
FEUDAL SYSTEM, they farmed land owned by the Crown, or by noblemen and
knights who provided the king with armies in return for that land. The king was
the ruler and laws were made by him. However, kings were not always secure and
some were overthrown by rebellious barons (rich, powerful noblemen, often with
their own private armies). Civil wars were common. Ordinary people had no say
in government, but at times they rose up against their rulers to demand better
conditions. The Church had a great deal of political power. England belonged to
‘CHRISTENDOM’ – the Catholic Christian world – and was in close contact with the
rest of Europe.
England was famous for the quality of its wool, which provided over half of the
country’s wealth by 1297. The guilds – associations of merchants and craftsmen
controlling the trade of their products – had great influence. They opposed
anything they saw as a threat to their own business.
During the Middle Ages, English armies conquered Wales and began to colonise
Ireland. England also controlled a large part of France, but during the Hundred
Years’ War most of this was lost. Although few people travelled widely, there was
regular movement of goods, culture and ideas into and out of the country. This
was also a period of wars in the Middle East, which were known in the West as the
CRUSADES and in the Arab world as the Frankish invasions. These conflicts caused
great tension between the Islamic world and Christendom. However, they also
resulted in a flow of culture and ideas from east to west.
England before the Normans: many cultures
Around the year 1000, England was in turmoil. For 200 years Viking Danes and
West Saxons had fought for control of this land that was inhabited mainly by the
descendants of those ‘first people’. For a long period England had been divided,
with the north and east ruled by the Danes. In 1000 the Danes were regularly
raiding the south coast and the West Saxon king, Aethelred, was forced to pay
tribute to the Danish king, Sweyn. In 1002, Aethelred ordered the massacre of all
Danes in his kingdom and many, possibly including Sweyn’s sister, were killed.
Sweyn invaded England and Aethelred was forced to flee to Normandy. Although
he eventually regained his kingdom, by 1016 all of England was ruled by the
Danish king Cnut. It was not until 1042 that a Saxon king, Edward the Confessor,
ruled again. When the Normans invaded in 1066, England had been under Saxon
rule for only 24 years. Its people, however, were a mix of many cultures.
Until recently, what we understood about the people who lived in England before
the Norman Conquest was based largely on histories written by monks living at
the time or soon afterwards. They concentrated on battles and kings. However,
recent archaeological, forensic and genetic research has led to a more accurate
understanding of these people and their migration stories:
• Objects buried with women include jewellery from Norway and clothes
from Germany. Clothing fashions varied widely, and through these we
understand how domestic lives were being changed by migration.
•
Chemicals in skeletons tell us about diet and drinking water, which can
reveal where people lived. Many of those buried in England previously lived in
Scandinavia, southern Europe and North Africa. Londoners were eating food
from many parts of the world. Skeletons of Africans have been discovered by
Uncorrected proof
Source 1 The Sutton Hoo helmet.
Source 2 Offa’s coin,
eighth century.
1 Look at the map. How might
these objects and styles have
come to Britain?
2 What does the coin in Source
2 tell us about England’s links
with the wider world?
Source 3 A medieval illustration
from Adelard’s translation of a
book by Euclid. It shows a woman
teaching geometry to student
monks. She has a set-square and
dividers to measure lengths on a
diagram.
archaeologists, including a man in Stratford-upon-Avon from the s
eventh century and a young woman in Fairford from the tenth or early
eleventh century.
• DNA analysis of people living today shows that most British people are
descended from the first people who migrated here. This is mixed with DNA
from Romans, Vikings and all the other migrants covered in this book. Only
between 5 per cent and 30 per cent of DNA is ‘English’ (mainly from the
Angles and Jutes). One family in Yorkshire has West African DNA, which
may be from this period.
There is strong evidence that the people of the British Isles had been in touch
with the wider world for centuries by this point. One example of such evidence
lies close to the River Deben at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk. Here there is a cluster
of mounds made by people in the seventh century, when the area was settled by
Saxon migrants from Germany. In 1939, archaeologists found a fine wooden ship
inside the biggest mound. It had been used to bury a dead ruler – possibly the
Saxon king Raedwald. Inside the ship were gold and silver objects for the king to
carry to the afterlife. Most important of these was a magnificent warrior helmet
(see Source 1). Seen by many as one of our earliest English treasures, the helmet
(now in the British Museum) is also a mirror to the rest of the world. Its design
and the objects with it show links across Europe and into Asia (see Factfile).
FACTFILE
A map showing where various hoards have been found.
The Sutton Hoo helmet and hoard
found in Suffolk.
Celtic hanging
bowl from West
Britain
Gold coins from
France.
Mounted warrior
on one plaque
based on Roman
images.
Siver spoons with Greek
Christian inscriptions.
Helmet design and ship burial
tradition from Sweden.
Silver bowls from
Byzantium.
Garnets making the
eyes of flying beasts
from Sri Lanka or
India.
The eighth-century gold coin in Source 2, now in the British Museum, was
minted for Offa, the king of Mercia in England. It is a copy of a Muslim coin,
with a very inaccurate imitation of Arabic script! Other Arab coins have been
found. In the Wirral in north-west England, people were using coins from
Byzantium in the sixth century.
Cultural links came not only with objects but also through ideas. An example
of this was Adelard, a monk from Bath who was born soon after the Norman
Conquest in 1080. He was a highly educated scholar and translator, who travelled
all over Europe and western Asia. He devoted himself to the ‘studies of the
Arabs’ at a time when Islamic Baghdad (Iraq) and Cordoba (Spain) – then called
Al-Andalus and under Islamic rule – were the most advanced places for the arts,
sciences and technology. Adelard translated many Arabic texts as well as the work
of the Ancient Greek mathematician Euclid. He was one of the first to introduce
Arabic mathematics into England. Inspired by Arabic thought, he supported the
idea of using human reason to solve scientific questions.
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